Thousand-year-old family: its rise began with Shang Yang’s reforms

Chapter 480: A Hundred Years' Plan
In the third year of Chengtong, heavy snow covered the ground in winter.

Everything returned to peace. The Chinese land of Kyushu, which had been in turmoil for many years, returned to peace again. The day of unification of the world came again. This was a sign of the coming prosperity and the tranquility of the early Tang Dynasty.

This is a great thing for Kyushu, and everyone in the world is rejoicing.

At this time in the Taiji Hall
Li Shimin was also celebrating the reunification of the country.

Taiji Hall
At this time, many people were sitting in the Taiji Hall. They seemed to have returned to the past. They were all very happy, raising their glasses to celebrate, expressing their joy and congratulating the unification of the Tang Dynasty!
Li Shimin sat at the front, followed by Chen Linan, Chen Ruohan, Zhangsun Wuji, Li Jing, Pei Ju, Qin Qiong and many other ministers.

At the banquet, when everyone was in high spirits, Li Shimin, who was sitting in a high seat, spoke.

"Everyone, I am where I am today because of all the contributions of you, my dear ministers."

"Over the years, you, my dear ministers, have fought in all directions and conquered this great empire for me. Now that I have unified the empire, and although some of you have shared this wealth with me, not everyone has received what they deserve."

He looked around, at the people who gradually calmed down as he spoke, and the smile on his face became even more sincere.

Li Shimin raised his cup and said, "You have made great contributions to the country and the Tang Dynasty. How can I treat you badly? I have thought about it for a long time and want to set up a Lingyan Pavilion in Chang'an City. Those who are named in the Lingyan Pavilion will all be dukes."

He stood there with a somewhat carefree and unrestrained look on his face, and his whole body was filled with a heroic aura.

"only."

Li Shimin smiled and said, "Although I do not want to rank the heroes in the Lingyan Pavilion, for the sake of future historical records, the Lingyan Pavilion has to be ranked."

"I think there should be no doubt about the first two."

"If Qilang and Chengtao cannot be ranked first and second, then people all over the world will probably laugh at the injustice of the Lingyan Pavilion."

He looked at everyone and uttered a sentence that was filled with other meanings.

"However, starting from the third place, all the way to the twenty-fourth place, how should we rank them?"

When this question was raised, the originally lively banquet began to gradually quiet down. This group of arrogant soldiers looked at each other, all with a glimmer of "ambition" in their eyes.

Who wants to be left behind?

No one wants to.

But at this time, no one spoke first.

Li Shimin smiled, breaking up the stagnant atmosphere, and then looked at everyone and said, "Everyone, the Lingyan Pavilion will take several years to complete, and the ranking of the portraits can be planned by then."

"Now I am just telling you all about this first, so that you will not be confused."

His words sounded like a warning, but also like encouragement.

"The Minister of the Imperial Household told me that in about five years, the Lingyan Pavilion will be built. If so, the portraits and arrangement of the twenty-four heroes in the Lingyan Pavilion will be determined in about four years."

"Everyone—four more years."

After Li Shimin finished saying this, he drank the wine in the glass, then clapped his hands, and the sound of stringed instruments continued. However, this time everyone no longer had the happy look they had before, but instead lowered their heads to show that they were in deep thought.

Only two people remained the same.

The two people, "Chen Ruohan" and "Chen Lin'an", whose so-called rankings have already been determined, are very friendly and respectful to each other, and each one is more humble than the other.

Chen Linan was eating hard, as if he hadn't eaten enough in years, while Chen Ruohan was drinking elegantly and calmly, with a slightly red look on his face, as if he was already drunk.

The banquet lasted for a long time, and when it was finally time to end, everyone left.

just
Everyone has their own plans when they come, and everyone has their own plans when they leave.

Specifically, it is a confrontation between three interest groups.

Guanzhong faction, Longxi faction, and local faction.

The outstanding representative of the Guanzhong faction was headed by "Li Jing", who later defected to Li Shimin's interest group. The Longxi faction was headed by Zhangsun Wuji, an interest group that had always followed Li Shimin. The local faction was headed by Pei Ju, an interest group in the capital of Luoyang, which spanned from the Sui Dynasty to the Jin Dynasty, and from the Jin Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty.

Among the three, the local faction was unwilling and did not want to fight - they did not have much face with Li Shimin to fight for.

The Guanzhong and Longxi factions were fighting fiercely.

Zhen Wang Mansion
Chen Zhan, Chen Ruohan, and Chen Linan, father and son, were all sitting in the courtyard, all with a look of fatigue on their faces. Chen Linan was the most helpless: "Father, it's no use for you to look for me."

"Why don't you just let me go to bed."

"I really don't understand these messed up things. Isn't it enough to have my big brother here?"

He looked at Chen Zhan, his eyes full of desire to "sleep".

Chen Zhan sneered, glared at Chen Linan and said, "This is the biggest thing that has happened to the Chen family in the past hundred years. You want to get away from it? How can such a good thing happen?"

He stroked his beard and said, "You are just lazy, how can your big brother handle it all by himself?"

"It's fine if you're lazy on weekdays, but are you lazy even about something like this?"

Chen Linan stuck out his tongue, and the whole person looked like the naughty boy he was when he was a child: "Father, I'm really not good at these, but I can do it."

"I will do whatever you and Big Brother say."

He stretched and stood up: "The Chen family has been preparing for this for hundreds of years. This rumbling reform is bound to begin at the beginning of the establishment of the Tang Dynasty and after it stabilizes."

"This is a war between the Chen family, your majesty, and those aristocratic families."

"Everyone in the world knows this, and all the aristocratic families in the world are also ready. They are just waiting...waiting for that opportunity to come."

"Sooner or later."

Chen Linan's voice was faint, but his words were full of firm power.

Chen Ruohan also stood up and looked at the distant moon: "Father, you don't have to worry so much. Just like the reform in the pre-Qin period nearly a thousand years ago, the Chen family will also get the support of the emperor this time."

"What our ancestor Chen Ye did back then, you and I are going to do again now."

"The Chen family has been preparing for this for hundreds of years, from the middle of the Dayu Dynasty until now, a hundred years have passed!"

"For hundreds of years, countless descendants of the Chen family, some in secret and some in the open, all worked together and struggled in the same direction."

"We cannot fail, and we will not fail."

Chen Ruohan looked at Chen Zhan who was sitting there, with a determined look in his brows: "Sixth Lang is far away now, he is about to come back, isn't it for this matter?" "Third Lang and Fourth Lang's years of hard work are finally bearing fruit, and Eighth Uncle and the others have also taken out all the classics of the philosophers and sages that our ancestors buried deep in the Zhushen Building. Many disciples of the Mohist school, many disciples of the Confucian school, and disciples of the Legalist school are all ready."

He exhaled lightly, looking very solemn.

"Father."

Chen Ruohan said those words again.

"Do not be nervous."

"We will win, and we will win."

In the fourth year of Chengtong, spring.

When the first rays of spring light in the fourth year of Chengtong fell on the earth, this vast empire, or this vast nation, finally ushered in the day of its reunification.

Ancient people were always very superstitious, believing that if such a great day was not announced to the world, sacrificed to God, and informed to the ancestors, then such a great achievement would not be accomplished.

In the first month of the fourth year of Chengtong, His Majesty Li Shimin, the Emperor of the Tang Empire, offered sacrifices to God, announced the establishment of the Tang Empire, and announced that the world was reunified.

At this founding ceremony, Emperor Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty announced the promotion of many of his ministers.

First of all, there was the customary conferment of titles on Chen. There were almost no changes to the many titles conferred on Chen, as if Li Shimin had been lazy and directly copied them from the edict that conferred titles on Chen by Dayu back then.

The only special thing was that Chen Linan was singled out for additional titles. In fact, Chen Linan did not care about the many additional titles, but Li Shimin said that Chen Linan could not care, but he could not not give them.

So Chen Linan had no choice but to accept it.

After Chen Linan and Chen Ruohan, it was Changsun Wuji and others who were given titles.

Unexpectedly, some ministers who should not have been given any additional titles were also among those who were given the title of Duke this time - Shen Faxing and Wang Shichong.

Of these two people, Wang Shichong was relatively okay. Conferring him the title of Duke was barely acceptable to people. However, the conferring of the title on Shen Faxing caused dissatisfaction among some people. However, because of Li Shimin's great majesty, no one dared to say anything.

After this group of people, the title of "Grand Emperor" Li Yuan was given.

This time, Li Shimin did it more obviously.

At the founding ceremony, the edict announcing the conferment of the title of "Grand Emperor" on Li Yuan was a complete copy of the edict that Liu Bang had used to confer the title on his father. All the words praising his character and benevolence were deleted and replaced with a bunch of inexplicable and empty words that sounded fake.

All the ministers could testify that after the edict was read, Li Yuan's face turned as black as the bottom of a pot - some of them saw that Li Yuan wanted to step forward and curse Li Shimin directly, but was stopped.

If the title conferred on Li Yuan was "within expectations", then the title conferred on "Li Jiancheng" seemed inexplicably strange.

Li Jiancheng was conferred the title of "Duke of Jin".

Duke of Jin.
This title always gives people a strange feeling. After all, when Sima Yi wanted to become emperor, the name he prepared for the country was also "Jin", and when Yu Wenzhi became emperor, the name of the country was also "Jin".

The name "Jin" should have been a very gorgeous and majestic name, because Jin was once one of the overlords of the Spring and Autumn Period, with powerful strength that overwhelmed other countries in the Spring and Autumn Period.

But the name of the country "Jin" always seems a bit unlucky.

why would you say so?

When "Jin" appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it already seemed a bit ominous.

The end of the State of Jin was not a simple demise, but rather it was divided up by domestic ministers - this is the so-called "Three Families Divide Jin".

Then the second country or family to use this name was "Sima Yi", and his fate was also obvious - all the people of the Sima family who participated in the rebellion were killed by thunder from the sky.

The country name "Jin" was only used for a few days and was only used in a small area.

The third person to use the country name "Jin" was "Yu Wenzhi". What was Yu Wenzhi's fate?

Just one or two years after he ascended the throne, the "Tang soldiers" led by Li Shimin were at the gates of the city. Yu Wenzhi surpassed Li Yuan and became the first emperor who was both the founding monarch and the king who lost his country.

And now.
Li Shimin gave the country name "Jin" to Li Jiancheng, which seemed like a mockery and also like a provocation.

It seems to be saying "Your so-called title of Duke of Tang is gone, and it was snatched away by me", or "I deliberately gave you this country name to disgust you. Jin surrendered to me, and you surrendered to me in the end."

All in all, this is a country name that seems to have no problems but is extremely ironic.

Changsun Wuji and others were standing below, nudging each other, and winking at people to look at Li Jiancheng, the Duke of Jin in front of them. Everyone had an amusement look on their faces, as they wanted to see how Li Jiancheng would react.

Will you fall out on the spot?

Some people with more cunning minds have even begun to think about the "conspiracy theory". Did the emperor give Li Jiancheng such a country name just to stimulate Li Jiancheng, so that he would turn against him at this time, and then Li Shimin could naturally kill Li Jiancheng?

But in a flash, Fang Xuanling gave up the idea.

He nudged Du Ruhui beside him and asked in a low voice, "Do you think Your Majesty did this on purpose or by accident?"

Du Ruhui also whispered: "Maybe he was careless on purpose."

"I know what you're thinking."

"But if Your Majesty wants to kill Li Jiancheng, there are dozens of ways to do it. There is no need to use such a strategy that everyone can see at this time - perhaps Your Majesty just wants to disgust his brother."

Fang Xuanling sneered in a low voice: "Look, this Duke of Jin is really cunning. He can even endure this. Look, he took the seal and the imperial edict. Doesn't this mean he has accepted the fact that he is the Duke of Jin?"

Wei Zheng, who was behind the two men, smacked his lips in a low voice, leaned forward to join the two men, and expressed his admiration: "As expected of him, I felt that this guy was not a good person at the beginning."

"did not expect"

Several people looked at each other and none of them took Li Jiancheng seriously.

He is nothing but a defeated general.

In the fourth year of Chengtong, the first month of spring.

When the Tang Dynasty was first established, its capital was Chang'an. However, Chang'an had not yet been completed, so Luoyang City was used as the temporary capital.

The emperor offered sacrifices to God, announced it to the world, and pardoned and conferred titles on his ministers.

same year
Change of reign title: Zhenguan.

(End of this chapter)